AUBURN — Light snow on Goff Hill caused a pileup Sunday morning, sending cars sliding down the hill into each other and into a police cruiser.
“They just kept on coming,” Mike Hartz said, describing how five cars slid into one another from his driveway at the bottom of the hill. “Totally unbelievable. This hill is treacherous. It’s the worst.”
According to Lt. Laurie Woodhead of the Auburn Police Department, Bruce Peters of Bar Harbor was driving a 2005 Dodge Stratus and turning from Lake Street onto Court Street around 9:30 a.m.
Peters was following a 2007 Toyota driven by Derek Swan of Auburn when Peters began to skid, clipping the rear of Swan’s vehicle, sending it into a utility pole according to Woodhead.
Woodhead said that while officer Nick Gagnon was on scene investigating that accident, a silver Ford Focus slid sideways down the hill, coming to rest behind the cruiser on the side of Court Street.
Meanwhile, Woodhead said, a Volvo SUV parked at the top of the hill slid all the way down the hill, striking the Focus, Gagnon’s cruiser and the Stratus before coming to a stop.
Woodhead said because the secondary crash involved one of their cruisers, it was handled by the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department.
As flurries continued to spread a light coat of snow on roadways, area police departments responded to numerous vehicles off the road and minor accidents through the evening Sunday.
dmcintire@sunjournal.com
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- Auburn police officer Nick Gagnon, center, and the drivers of five vehicles wait for a plow truck to clear Goff Hill before continuing after snowfall made the Court Street hill extremely slippery on Sunday morning. Gagnon’s police cruiser was parked as he assisted the driver of the black car at far left when the silver SUV, foreground, despite being in park, slid on the icy roadway, clipping one car plus the police cruiser and then ran into the back of the car at left, pushing it off the road. The chain reaction happened around 9:30 a.m.
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